1/19/23 Discord AMA Summary
Summary of Discord audio AMA, January 19th, 2023.
Space and Time participants:
Nate Holiday, CEO and Co-Founder
Spencer Reeves, Creative Director
Mike Post, Community Manager
Thank you to all of the community members who attended!
[Session begins]
Introduction
Nate: We're just kicking off the year and there are a lot of things that we need to deliver this year, and we're pretty excited about what's on the roadmap. And today I'm excited to talk about what that roadmap is and talk specifics, so you know what's coming and what to expect and how we should think about Space and Time, and what's going to be delivered for this year. And how we believe that the data industry is going to be changing, and how Space and Time is at the middle of that change for the industry and the key partners to make that happen.
Mike: Alright!
Nate: So yeah, do you want me to give a quick intro, then, Mike?
Mike: Please do.
Nate: For those that don't know me, my name is Nate Holiday, Co-Founder and CEO of Space and Time. I've spent about a decade in the data business from a data warehousing perspective. I've also spent a couple of years in FinTech and working with large private equity groups as well. Data is something that I've done my whole career, and what's interesting is that at the time when I first got into the data business, I thought it was all about reporting and looking at visualizations and graphs and making decisions based on graphs and data that's coming to you. What I didn't realize when I got into the data business over a decade ago is that, yes, you can look at graphs and you can start to understand what has happened in the past, but one of the things that I didn't fully realize at the time is how businesses operate their daily business in real time on data as well.
And as you start to understand what a smart contract does in business automation, and the process of a smart contract, and you fully understand what a data warehouse does in automating business and key business decisions on a daily basis for the largest companies in the world, whether they're doing A/B tests on websites or they're closing their books with a data warehouse using analytics, I quickly started to realize that everything that a business is doing is interacting with data, is running the overall business from a process perspective. And that's what's really exciting about the intersection of a smart contract and a data warehouse. Smart contracts today on blockchains are very primitive, but as those continue to grow and expand and the use cases expand, data warehouses powering those smart contracts really extend all the capabilities, and we're going to talk more about it today. But what got me so excited about Space and Time and wanting to co-found Space and Time with Scott and team is that there was this huge void in the market within Web3.
There were people that were working on on-chain data, there were people that were working on off-chain data. Obviously we're a strong partner and part of the BUILD program with Chainlink, and I've been working with Chainlink for a few years as well. The data warehouse is this core competency, this core capability that has to exist to bring on-chain and off-chain data together, especially if you're doing complex business calculations in order to feed smart contracts through oracles and with Chainlink. So this became really exciting for me and something that I jumped feet first in and we've been building ever since, and it's been really exciting.
AMA
Mike: Let's move on to some talk about roadmap. So we're into 2023. 2022 was a huge year for Space and Time. Why don't you just give all of us here a little bit of background, especially for the newcomers, on what Space and Time accomplished in 2022?
Nate: Space and Time in 2022 accomplished some critical items. Really, the inception of Space and Time was 2021, in a sense. If you think about the conception of Proof of SQL, you think about the hybrid transaction and analytic database and the decentralization of the nodes and the core concepts of the primitives of Space and Time, they really have been developed over multiple years. But 2022 I think was really critical because you started to see Space and Time begin to develop as a company. In 2022, we had our first funding that came through led by Framework in our seed round. We started to hire our first employees. Space and Time has over 40 full-time employees now. Then we also had a strategic round that you saw in the announcements that came out in September, that was led by Microsoft's M12 venture fund, the enterprise venture funding of Microsoft.
You also saw a few things that came out around SmartCon, right? And obviously towards the very end of the year, I think the big item was the controlled release of our product. And so customers are starting to get on the product and starting to use Space and Time as a controlled release with the hybrid transaction and analytic database. Just to give you some context, the ability to build a 40-person team in a year, the ability to take a project from concept to a controlled release, the size and scale of a data warehouse, in a year is something that you typically don't see happen. Usually these are two-to-three-year builds just from concept to a controlled release or an alpha product. So I'm incredibly grateful for the team. I'm grateful for everything that Spencer has done from a marketing perspective, and everything that the community has done to help build this.
You look at Discord and you look at the community numbers, we just hit over 10,000 community members. You see where we're growing with Twitter and LinkedIn and everything else. The ability and the velocity in which the community and the brand is growing is really exciting to us. With all of the press and the TechCrunch and the Entrepeneur articles and the huge community development, though, comes a lot of expectations. And so again, I'm going to go back and really focus on the controlled release, because what I want to make sure that the community understands is that we are a database. We're a natively-built Web3 database that does both transactions and analytics in the same process. And we don't white-label this product from another vendor. There are plenty of Web3 data companies today that say “We're going to go build all the APIs on top of a database that already exists, and we're going to go pay that database company to white-label it, to run it, and to make it look like it's our product.” We don't do that. We are building the native Web3 database from the ground up, meaning that Space and Time is building brand-new data warehousing technology and we're doing it because a decentralized data warehouse and the primitives of that are very different than a Web2 data warehouse that people are licensing in Web3 today and they're calling it at Web3 database and then they're just building APIs on top of it to start to stitch data together.
Mike: Awesome. So then the obvious logical next question is what's next? What's coming up for Space and Time in the upcoming months, and then what are we looking at hopefully in the rest of 2023?
Nate: I want to save a lot of the announcements for the proper time to release them, but I'll talk in general on some of these announcements. First of all, you're going to see the development of our product. So right now, there's the controlled release. You're going to start to see some customer announcements. You're going to start to see use cases being spoken about of what customers are doing on the controlled release of Space and Time. And that's going to happen basically now through the end of April. And then we're going to roll into an open beta program for Space and Time, meaning that we're going to launch a dapp, meaning that everybody, if they love data and they want to work with data and they want to run analytics, can go to Space and Time's website, they can launch the dapp, and they can start to run analytics.
When you interact with Space and Time, and when the open beta starts here in the May timeframe, the exciting thing about the open beta is that, first, Space and Time captures an accurate, relational, queryable copy of the blockchain. Meaning, even if you don't have data, necessarily, and you're not running a large business enterprise with ERP systems and CRM systems and supply chain data, etc., you can still go run data within Space and Time, because we're going to have relational copies of the blockchain, meaning Ethereum, Polygon, Avalanche, Binance, etc., and you can start to interact with that data. So, for example, today a smart contract is not capable of asking questions like "Show me all wallets that have made at least 10 transactions across two major blockchains or 10 Bitcoin transactions across major blockchains." All of that data within those major blockchains is going to be readily available, and you're able to query that. You're able to interact with this. You're able to build your own dashboards, you're able to build your own little kind of analytic capability and you're able to share that out for others as well to see everything that you've built and to participate in the ecosystem.
And so we're pretty excited about the dapp that we're going to launch. We're really excited about the open beta, because we want the enterprises and we want the Web3 projects and applications that are being built to be built on Space and Time, but also because there's going to be a tremendous amount of information that we're going to be unleashing to the industry, and people who love data and want to participate can go build dashboards and share them out as well. So that's something that we're planning on for the May timeframe. We're also going to launch the testnet and the beta for Proof of SQL here in the spring, which is going to be something that we're really proud of. Proof of SQL is extremely innovative. It’s forward-thinking. It ensures that you can actually connect not just a decentralized data warehouse, but really any data warehouse or any centralized database in the world, using Proof of SQL, to a smart contract, and you can have verifiable analytics, meaning you can start to ensure that the data being delivered to that smart contract is tamperproof and verifiable. That's going to come out in the spring as well.
We have tremendous partnerships. As we think about what we're launching, and everything that we're launching, you're going to start to see partnerships all over the world, in the US, in Asia, in Europe. You're going to see partnerships across the major blockchains. You're going to see partnerships with top brands within Web3. You're going to see partnerships in the Web2 enterprise businesses that want to start participating. And of course you're going to see partnerships with hyperscale clouds. And one of the key focuses is how the Microsoft relationship is going to continue to evolve. And there are some pretty exciting things that we're working on with Microsoft. So we're going to continue to improve and progress and expand that relationship as well, on the development side, on the analytics side, on the artificial intelligence side, and of course on the customer side. And we're already starting to talk with really exciting customers across the board that are interested, in Web2 and in Web3.
And I think obviously the focus is getting to production and getting to mainnet, and that's still on target for the fall. If you've gone and read any of our announcements, you'll see these timelines that have been laid out are the same timelines that we're marching to or executing on those timelines. The exciting part for me, though, is to see everything else that we're doing that's innovative, from the dapp, from specific industry analytics that you're going to see being rolled out with some of our key partners. A lot of the innovation around what we're doing with large partners like Microsoft around artificial intelligence and machine learning and the integration with Space and Time is going to be really exciting as we build this up. Mike, I know that was a long answer, but you gave me the floor to talk about this year.
Mike: <laugh> True! Definitely. So we all know that this has been a little bit of a difficult time for crypto, especially in the last few months. If at all, how have market conditions affected the project roadmap for this year?
Nate: We're pretty lucky from a project and from a project roadmap perspective. And I use the term "lucky" because as I look at the market conditions in the world and as I look at some of the market conditions for some of the projects, there are incredible builders out there that are building amazing technology and amazing projects, and the timing hasn't been as fortunate for them as it has been for us. Also, they haven't been as fortunate to have the investors that we have. One thing that I would just flat out say is first of all, I'm grateful for our investors and everything that they've done for us. We haven't been impacted at all from any of the fallout that you saw in 2022. We have no exposure to anything within the FTX realm of the world, the Alameda realm of the world.
All of our financials are currently in US dollars. They're sitting in US treasury bills, earning interest. As that interest goes up, it's positive for the overall project as well. And those that we have hired are pretty excited around changing the data world and what we're building from an innovative data perspective. So the exciting thing for us is that the team is still very strong, very interested in building out the data warehouse that we're building and all the constructs around that. So for us, there's been really no exposure. We continue to build at an incredibly fast rate. The team continues to grow and develop, and we're still hiring for key and critical roles. So hiring hasn't been stopped at all either. There hasn't been any reduction in workforce. We continue to build, we continue to hire, and the investments that investors have made continue to be used in appropriate ways. We're pretty excited about where we are, and we're going to deliver this year.
Mike: Let's move on to some project questions. I love that we got this question, especially because I know you love this question. And I know that you went over it briefly already. But why does Web3 need Space and Time?
Nate: So I'm going to try to make this as simple as possible today as well. Let's say you want to go build an application and you need data. Today, without Space and Time, here's what you have to do. You have to go index a bunch of data. So yeah, there's a bunch of indexing tools out there. But they're limited in their ability to interact with the rest of the data ecosystem of the world. They're also very limited in their ability around their incentives in order to get that spun up and to interact with the holistic data architecture. But let's say we're going to do it anyways, right? So let's say Mike, Spencer, and I, we’re starting a new company. We need to start to bring in data. We go pick out an indexing platform. We realize that this becomes very hard and it's pretty limited, so we have to go hire a few data engineers, because the indexing that we're getting currently from a provider isn't really working. So we hire a few data engineers. So now we're paying for an indexing solution, we're paying for data engineers. We go pick a blockchain, we start to index all this data, and now we need a place to put all this data today, because we have a ton of other business data that's going to be sitting off-chain. Let's say we're just starting a video game. So now we have an Unreal Engine server running, we have all this off-chain data running in these game servers, and now we need a place to put all that data. So we walk over to a major cloud solution and we say, "Hey, we need some nodes, we need a database, and we're doing transactions within our video game." So we have to pick a transactional system like PostgreSQL, and we also need analytics because we have to start to run analytics.
So, we pick an analytics solution in Web2, like a Databricks, or Redshift, or Snowflake, or you name it, pick your choice of a Web2 database from an analytics solution. Well, these are two different databases, by the way. So we have to go buy ETL solutions. So we’ve got to go buy an Informatica or a Talend or a different ETL. Extract data, transform that data, and load that data, because they're two different databases. And by the way, you have indexing data on the blockchain. Now you have to hire some engineers because these two databases don't talk to each other. You also have to hire probably an outside consulting company to make sure that all that ETL is being transferred. When you think about that architecture, that's what companies are doing today when they're building out their data architecture. And then, by the way, that doesn't even account for "Hey, after I bring all this data together in this unique kind of environment that I've gone and built, they actually need to put that data back on-chain, because I'm a Web3 company." People want to see, they want to verify the data, they want to make sure that the data that they're using for paying things out is transparent. So of course now I've got to take all that data. Now, something that is working in Web3 really well is I've got to probably call up a company like Chainlink and say, "Hey, this data, I've got to figure out how to get it to a smart contract.” So I've got to use oracles, and I need to make sure that it can be trusted. So let's figure out a way to draw consensus on this data. Do I need a bunch of oracles? And then we can put this on-chain. But the problem is that the database that's providing all that data is still a centralized black box. I can't prove in the database without having multiple data sources that are independent of each other feeding that data the capabilities to show that this data hasn't been tampered with.
Now, if you're running data processes within a data warehouse, these are large-scale, massive data processes. There are companies in which a single data process may run overnight for eight hours. So the idea that you're going to then take this data process that's running in a data warehouse and you're going to run it 30 times and then you're going to draw consensus on that and put it through oracles and back on-chain isn't going to work, and it's not going to work because the cost to do that would be astronomical. You can't go to a CTO of a large bank and say, "That data process that's taking eight hours to run, we're going to now run it 30 times and we're going to put it back on-chain." So this is the world that, without Space and Time, people have to interact with.
And independent of the decentralized data, independent of the trustless data, independent of everything that we believe in our core that the world should operate on, trustless data, decentralized data, a place where a single entity can't control the data that you see today, take all those primitives away and just look at the business concept of, say, if I want to start a video game, what are the data capabilities and servers and people that I need to actually run this business? It becomes really, really, really expensive. It becomes six, seven different data providers. It becomes a bunch of engineers you have to hire. Oh, and by the way, even if you do all that, there's no way that you can actually take that data warehouse process, that database process, connect it to a smart contract and trust it. And so if you are a CEO of one of these DeFi services or you're a CEO of one of these gaming services, and you go spend a million dollars building this data infrastructure that I just explained to you, when you go to bed every night and you're minting stuff on-chain, you realize that, really, the core concept of your business is dependent upon that nobody actually hacks you, that an employee doesn't go tamper with the option price history of your DeFi protocol and there's an inside job, or that some local, state, or national government doesn't say, "I don't like your protocol, so I'm just going to take it off. I'm just going to shut it down," or they say, "I don't like your politics within that national government, so I'm going to tell provider X to shut you down."
Independent of all of that, just to run your daily business, without Space and Time, there is this massive, massive cost and complexity that people have to use today. Now, if you shift this to Space and Time, what this looks like is indexed data is already coming from blockchains. When you log into Space and Time, it's readily available. You have a transaction and analytic database that are in the same cluster, so you can start to add transactions and analytics in the same cluster. So in terms of, say, what endgame events that come from an Unreal Engine gaming server led to an online transaction that comes from transactions from the blockchain, you can now start to answer these questions. By the way, you don't need an ETL tool, because that's all in the same database.
You don't need all these engineers because all that data's there. You can store that data in Space and Time, so you don't need to go spin up a bunch of tokens for a decentralized file system. And once all of that is done, you can actually just take that and say, "Write this to the chain," write directly through a smart contract directly with Chainlink and an automated process. And that can be written directly to the chain and trusted through Proof of SQL. That changes how businesses build on data primitives for Web3 customers and companies and projects. But it also changes how Web2 companies start to interact with data and start to build out their own business processes.
Because businesses that have been built over the last 50 years have hundreds of millions of dollars spent in their data infrastructure and they're not going to go just change that overnight. It runs on SQL, they have data warehouses, they have ETL tools, they have multiple data warehouses. And so for us to say, "Hey, we are this bridge that can connect Space and Time to all of your data infrastructure and it can be trusted with all the different smart contracts and blockchains and you can read and write to and from," it becomes a very easy-to-use tool with a very specific use case that says, "If you want to interact with Web3 data, you use Space and Time." And that's something that we're extremely proud of. So that's my opinion of why we're positioned so well to solve a huge problem in the industry for Web3, but also just in the data world, in the data world in general. This solves a lot of problems that a lot of companies have to try to manage today that are really unmanageable. And it's unreasonable to expect these IT organizations and businesses to manage in the way that the current world expects them to, because of the tools that are provided to them.
Mike: Absolutely. Thanks, Nate. So let's go to a very commonly-asked question which regards Space and Time's economic model. I'm sure you get this question quite a bit as well. Can you touch on the profit model? And of course the question we probably get most, which regards a possible Space and Time token in the future.
Nate: That's a great question. The economic model is pretty simple. It's pay for what you use. If you want to run computation within Space and Time, people pay for that. In terms of how they pay for that, obviously if you're a large corporation, you can pay in US dollars. If you're on the blockchain and you're building Web3 applications, there are the capabilities to pay with stablecoins today. We are monitoring the business, we are monitoring, of course, all the regulation around tokens. Scott, myself, and the rest of the team are watching this very closely because one of the most important things for us is that if you think about a decentralized network, a native token like Space and Time plays a critical role in that network around incentives in the network, around node operations in the network, around community development and sharing of data, and open-sourcing as much of that data and shareable data as you can. So there are a ton of reasons why Space and Time has a strong desire to launch a token, and we're working very strongly around this with the team and with the organizations that would help us do this. So we're going to continue to monitor this. Unfortunately, I don't have a date of an expectation around tokens, and we get this question all the time, but it's something that we're monitoring very closely.
Mike: I know you talked about the upcoming roadmap to a degree, but we get this question a lot also: how can the community participate in the coming months around Space and Time?
Nate: First of all, I just want to say thank you to everyone for sharing out the project. I mean, the more people that know about it and the more people that understand what we do---Space and Time is not an easy concept. One of the things that I think is a hurdle for us is truly getting people to understand what we do. And as we go and launch the dapp, and as we do our open beta, the world will advance the knowledge and education of the power of Space and Time because, you know, you can see it, you can touch it, you can run queries, you can build dashboards, you can do all of that. And so it'll become more prevalent over the spring and summer time period because people are going to be able to see it and touch it in an open beta.
I think that Spencer and Kat and team had done a wonderful job; one article that they just launched was “17 Use Cases for Blockchain.” But I think that the one thing that I would love to see continue to evolve in the community is for those in the community that understand what a data warehouse is and understand our docs, when you read our docs, and understand the capabilities of what we can deliver, to start to engage in a way that starts to educate the rest of the community on the true power of a data warehouse and why a data warehouse is needed. And so one, continue to share, because we need the world to understand what we're building and why it's important. The why-it's-important part is something that I think we're going to focus on over the coming months as well, to make sure that people truly understand the technology that we're building, why it's important, and then help people come along.
There's going to be a lot of opportunities for people to start to build really cool stuff with Space and Time and start to share it out. Not only to be a community supporter, people that are sharing out the brand and participating in the community and brand---all fun, and it's really exciting to see! I think the next evolution of key leadership and development will be those that truly understand what it is, the power of it, and then those that can help other people start to utilize that from a technical perspective, from a development perspective, from a thought leader perspective of "Look what I built, and look what you can do, and you can do this, too," right? Because there are going to be a lot of things that we launch that aren't going to require you to have deep technical capabilities. You're not going to be required to be, necessarily, an SQL expert to actually participate and interact with the product, which is really exciting for me, because I want a community where everyone can participate with the product, not just those that are deeply technical in SQL and engineering.
Mike: You mentioned the dapp and the open beta. Can you tell us a little bit more about that? And in the context of the open beta, is it going to be open to the general public? Will there be any barrier to people participating?
Nate: We want to make it so that people can participate in the open beta. So even if you don't have data, and you just want to interact with blockchain data, we want to make it so people can participate in that, test it, kick it around, share it out. And if you do have data, and you want to bring that data, whether you're a company or a project or just someone that has data that's off-chain, and you want to combine it with on-chain data as well, then we're going to encourage you to do that as well. But it is open to all that are interested in participating.
Mike: Fantastic. That's great. Can you tell us about the validator network?
Nate: So, our community of nodes are clusters of nodes. So as we roll this out, of course we're working with Microsoft and others to make sure that we have enterprise-grade clusters. We have really exciting partnerships, again, across all regions, of large-scale node operators and validators that are going to participate in the overall decentralized network. Look, I'm a firm believer that, and people hear me talk about this all the time, I want to see a world where even if you don't know how to run a node and you don't have the capabilities or the floor space or a warehouse where you buy a bunch of technical equipment and hook it up and run it, I want a world where people can participate in that network, almost like an Airbnb rental, or a windmill, or an oil rig.
People being able to say, "Hey, I'm part of this network that's generating economic value for the world, and I, as a participant in that, get to participate in the overall ecosystem and the economy of it, even if I don't truly know how to run a node network and I don't have a big house down the street that I own," that's something that's really important to me. And so we're working on what that looks like. Because I don't see a world, especially in 2023, where I just take my laptop and I just hook it up and all of a sudden I'm this verified validator or a node operator, because we have clusters of nodes that are being run as the overall node network. So it's a nuanced answer, but I'll just tell you that the world that we're driving towards and that we want to see is where the community can participate in the overall network. But how that looks is something we're still working on, because we realize not everyone has the luxury of participating as a node operator, as a validator, with the large-scale equipment and floor space that's required.
Mike: Definitely. Moving on to the tech side of that, it's that cluster architecture that really allows Space and Time to scale to large data volumes. Could you explain a little bit more about that architecture?
Nate: Space and Time is a decentralized data warehouse. In data warehouses today, you have nodes that break up the data, and they break up the workload across that data, and then they bring it all together again for answers, for query results. And that's what makes data warehouses very effective, that you can take that data and spread it across multiple nodes, you process that data through the database, and it brings the queries back together. A decentralized network is that, but, basically, not only does the data kind of operate appropriately within a data warehouse like the industry standards require, but you also have the ability where you have the decentralized network across multiple clusters of nodes, and so you have redundancy, always online, duplicated data, which truly creates this decentralized network because your data, although it's ANSI Standard, and it's safe, and it's compliant from a security perspective, you actually have multiple copies of the data across clusters.
And so there's no one entity that can ever own someone's data, and also because it's a cluster network as well, because nobody owns that data, they can't start to interact with it in a controlled, centralized environment that can manipulate that data. And because other people own that network, we, as a software provider for the decentralized network, can't control, manipulate, and own that data. And so for us, a decentralized network and clusters of nodes is something that's at the core of our belief of what we're building, because it truly becomes what we believe is a game-changer in the data warehousing market and in the database market in general, where you truly have a decentralized network of nodes that are operating this. It's better for security, it's better for scalability. I already talked about the control capabilities that make it vastly improved as well. So we're pretty bullish on exactly what we're building in the decentralized network.
Mike: For the people who are looking forward to possibly operating a cluster, can you tell us about the general technical requirements?
Nate: The thing about Space and Time is that it's a cluster, so it's more than one node, it's three or more as a cluster. And to run enterprise-scale hardware, you have to have enterprise-scale hardware. So it's going to have large memory capabilities and CPU capabilities.
Mike: Let's move on to partnerships. Could you explain a little bit more about space and Time's partnership with Azure and what that entails?
Nate: Yeah. And again, I don't want to steal the thunder of things that we're working on. Our Microsoft partnership with Azure is both technical---meaning from an engineering side and from an innovation side---and go-to-market focused, from supporting customers and making sure that the services that are provided include Web3 services. So you're going to start to see this become clear as we make announcements together. And we're working on some pretty exciting stuff together. I think the one thing that I would just say holistically for this year is that there's the decentralized network of a data warehouse, which is innovative and changing, and Proof of SQL, the capability to connect that to a smart contract is really a game-changer and innovative as well. The other thing that you're going to see out of Space and Time this year, especially with Microsoft, is that the interaction with the data warehouse historically is pretty technical, and the legacy interactions that you see within the Web2 world are pretty challenging, and I think what you're going to start to see with Space and Time is that with Microsoft and what we're doing from an AI perspective, you're going to start to see that more of an everyday internet user is going to start to have the capabilities to interact with a data warehouse and all the power and all the information that it can provide a user. And so we're really going to push the envelope around that. And that includes what we believe is a world-class UX, it includes what we believe is integrating world-class technology into the overall solution of what we're providing, so that everyday users can ask simple questions and get answers that are complex, that previously would take very technical engineering capabilities and very technical coding capabilities to get the information. So you're going to see the continuation of making it easier for everyday users to ask questions---simple questions, but providing complex answers to those questions that, currently, the industry doesn't operate that way today, they don't provide those capabilities for everyday internet users. So you're going to see the involvement of that, and obviously we're leaning into that with Microsoft and others as well.
Mike: Great. And just one last question, also on the partnership side of things: are there any existing plans for cooperation between Space and Time and existing Web3 protocols in GameFi or DeFi or Web3 social media, and where will Space and Time maybe be focused first?
Nate: Yeah, so I think I've talked about this a lot. We're focusing on gaming and DeFi protocols. Social media is also an area of interest. And, surprisingly, there's been a tremendous amount of interest around infrastructure, and it is kind of an area that I didn't initially think about as kind of a core growth lever for us. But as I talked about earlier, if you're building infrastructure, if you're building a protocol and you're building on a centralized database, that doesn't really work for every business. And so we're seeing a lot of Web3 protocols that are saying, "Hey, I've gone and built out infrastructure on Web2, or I'm planning to, but, number one, it's way too complex; number two, it's way too costly; and number three, it goes against the ethos of the overall Web3 community and the founders." And so just core infrastructure in Web3 is also an area that has high interest as well. So we're supporting all three of those vectors. I think you're going to continue to see partnerships, and we'll continue to announce them as they progress. Obviously, I'd be remiss if I didn't just have a shout-out to Chainlink. I mean, Chainlink is for us a world leader in on-chain and off-chain data capabilities and the technology that they're providing. They're the foremost experts when it comes to, obviously, oracles and the interactions with those oracles with smart contracts. And so I think that obviously from a Chainlink perspective as well, I'd say that we're grateful for their partnership, we're grateful for everything that we're building with them. You're going to continue to see innovation in our capabilities to interact with smart contracts as we progress this year as well. And what's interesting is that people can get really excited around all the UI and the UXs and artificial intelligence and the cool video game graphics that are going to come out, and how that's integrated with analytics and the powering of these DeFi protocols. But the real magic is when very complex technology like Chainlink technology is running in the background and it just works. And a lot of people take that for granted, right? I don't take that for granted. And so we're extremely excited to of course further that partnership with them this year as well.
Conclusion
Mike: So, folks, I think we're getting close to the end of this AMA. Nate, do you have any closing thoughts to leave us with?
Nate: I would just say that I just want to thank everyone for the time. Every time we do these, I get more excited. There's a tremendous amount of participation in our AMAs in the Discord. I wish I could keep up with all of the interactions and communications. I love where the community is going. It's something that is fluid and it's something that is evolving and it's something that all of you get to participate in. One of the things I'd say is that with marketing, we sit around and we obsess over the brand, over the look, over the feel, over what's being created. And I think Spencer and team have done a fabulous job with the brand and everything that's being created. With the community, though, it's really exciting, because this is people from all over the world coming together and starting to create what that community is going to look like, and how it's going to participate in the world, and the style in which it participates, and the creativity with which it participates.
And it's all things that just evolve over a period of time with all of your hard work and ingenuity and creativity. And it's exciting. I scroll through all the channels and I look at all the content that's being created and I see all the content online, on Twitter or LinkedIn. And I just want to say that I appreciate it, because your creative energy is the most valuable thing you have. And your willingness to participate and bring that creative energy to our community means an awful lot to us. We're community-first. We're community-driven. We want to continue to participate and support the community, because as we become successful, obviously, as a project, we want those that participate in the community to really have an identity and to really know that you belong, and really for the world to know that as a company, we support you and your efforts and your creative energy and the wonderful and crazy memes that people make, etc. All of that comes into the overall kind of advancement of the community. One of the things that we had done at SmartCon last year is we created this series of NFTs and we just were like, "It would be fun, right? Let's give out NFTs totally free." There are no incentives around this. We don't make a dollar off of it. If people transfer NFTs in the future, we have no participation in it.
And what I didn't realize was how excited people would become over these NFTs, right? Because we're a database, we're a data warehouse. And I sat there and I just saw that and I thought this is just something very simple that we wanted to just provide as a thank-you. So with that said, we have a couple more that we're going to roll out. I have asked Mike to monitor this AMA and to randomly send out some NFTs from the version threes to those that were here and either woke up early or stayed up late, participating in and just being a part of this AMA. And so we're going to hand out a couple more and randomly select some that are participating today as well.
And then we're going to think about, as we finalize version three and we move into version four and five, just continue to make sure that everyone can participate in just that fun way as well. So I'm challenging the team as well to come up with exciting opportunities, just to have further participation in a meaningful way around creativity and art and everything that we're doing from an NFT perspective. So anyway, I really wanted to say thank you, right? Because your participation here is voluntary, and we recognize that, and time is the most valuable thing that any of us have in life. And so we're just grateful that you choose to spend it with us.
Mike: We are definitely very, very grateful for our community, for all of you. So, Spencer, I know you really haven't gotten to talk here, but any final thoughts for the community?
Spencer: Yeah, I mean, I'm just going to echo you guys. The time we get to spend with you guys and everybody in our community has really been something special. And I cannot thank you all enough for how much you guys have been sharing on socials, how much you've been interacting in Discord. I mean, it's pretty insane to think about the support we are getting from the community as a whole. Really excited to bring you guys something that you guys can get your hands on. I know Nate was talking a little bit about the dapp. We're doing amazing work, and the design team and myself are really, really, really excited to bring this to you guys. Keep firing us up on socials. It helps us more than you guys know. Building this community is really important as we look towards this year. And all of you have been playing a really integral part in that community. So thank you so much again. And also thank you, Mike. Mike is up all hours of the night with all of you. He is the absolute legend of the community and I could not be more thankful for him and what he does for you guys. So make sure you give him some love. And we will see you guys on the next one. Really appreciate it.
Mike: Thank you, Spencer. Thank you, Nate. And thank you to all of you who came to listen to this AMA. We'll catch you next time.
Nate: Thanks, everyone.
Spencer: See you, guys. [Session ends]
Space and Time Links:
Website: http://spaceandtime.io
Twitter: http://twitter.com/spaceandtimeDB
Discord: http://discord.com/spaceandtimeDB
Telegram: http://t.me/spaceandtimeDB
LinkedIn: http://linkedin.com/space-and-time-db
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